Frederick Douglass never lived in Brooklyn, but from the early 1850s onward, his frequent visits to the fast-growing city invariably attracted considerable attention. Brooklyn was home to several leading abolitionists who were key allies of Douglass, a roster led by Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Tilton, and Rev. James and Elizabeth Gloucester. Yet through the Civil War, pro-Confederacy sentiment also ran strong, as evidenced by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s vitriolic attacks on Douglass and his friends.Akashic's position as a centerpiece in the Brooklyn literary world will help position this title.Preface and Afterword to be contributed by a notable scholar and another public figure.Theodore Hamm is a well-respected New York journalist who was a founding editor of The Brooklyn Rail.Theodore Hamm is currently the chair of journalism and media studies at St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn.Akashic's promotion will have a strong social media componentGalleys available in March 2016.
This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works or all the significant works – the Œuvre – of this famous and brilliant writer in one ebook – easy-to-read and easy-to-navigate: • • Narrative of the Life of, an American Slave • My Bondage and My Freedom • The Upward Path: A Reader For Colored Children • Collected Articles of • Charles W. Chesnutt • The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Memorial IssueVarious • Abolition Fanaticism in New York • John Brown: An Address at the th Anniversary of Storer College etc.
Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he wrote NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. During the Civil War he assisted in the recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and consistently argued for the emancipation of slaves. After the war he was active in securing and protecting the rights of the freemen. In his later years, at different times, he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, Marshall and recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti. His other autobiographical works are MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM and LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. He died in 1895.